Reuters reporting that exposed brutal, widespread military abuses against the Rohingya and democracy activists was honored by the 2023 Human Rights Press Awards. The awards recognize outstanding reporting on human rights issues across Asia and are awarded by Human Rights Watch and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Arizona State University.
Announced on World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2023, Reuters took the top prize in Investigative Feature Writing (English). The category recognizes investigative work that uses all journalistic tools to uncover or expose new details of a significant human rights issue.
Reuters reporters with deep experience in Myanmar showed how the junta - accused by the United Nations of war crimes and crimes against humanity - has sought to crush resistance through old and new methods, burning villages, deploying militias, and rolling out Chinese surveillance technology in major cities.
While much of their work has focused on the human rights abuses by the junta since the coup, the reporters also revealed for the first time the secret military planning behind the expulsion of almost a million Rohingya Muslims in 2017. They showed that the purge of the Rohingya was long planned, borne out of deep-seated racism and a determination to reduce the Muslim population.
Reuters also received an honorable mention in the Explanatory Feature Writing (English) category for reporting China's crackdown on human rights lawyers.
Read Reuters latest investigative reporting on Reuters.com.
Media contact:
JJ Minder
jj.minder @ tr.com
